An Anthropological View
by Kirk W Huffman

Thinking About Kava
Part One

Visitors to Spain and Eivissa should be
well familiar with 'Cava' - with a 'c' - the Spanish form
of champagne. Our friend Sinclair must have imbibed some in
his headier days here on the island. It can still be purchased
rather cheaply here (unless one goes for the more 'up market'
brands, some of which can be just as good - I am told, as
I don't drink alcohol - as some of the French brands). I just
hope we have no French readers! But there is another form,
Kava (sometimes called 'Kavakava' in Europe), which is completely
different, which arrived here on the island in tablet form
in the health food shops and pharmacies early last year and
was available until mid-January this year. What is it and
why is it no longer available?

This is a rather long and complex story,
not really to do with Eivissa/Ibiza, but it touches Eivissa
and most other places in Europe - and the US - and has its
roots, so to speak, in the South Pacific. It is a very timely
topic at the moment and some readers may have seen press reports
regarding kava within the last few months. Unfortunately most
of the European press coverage has not been very positive,
portraying a lack of understanding of what kava is and accepting
almost without question certain medical and press reports
emanating recently from Switzerland and Germany. In the latter
country a form of 'press frenzy' - almost like a pack of hungry
sharks - managed to possibly almost irreparably damage the
image of an important ritual and medicinal plant highly respected
by Pacific Islanders since time immemorial. The story of kava
covers a third of the earth's surface, possibly goes back
several thousand years and its recent entry into the 'white
man's world' exemplifies much of the cultural arrogance and
cultural misunderstanding that seem to be the main characteristics
of our 'modern' societies vis-à-vis the more ancient
surviving traditional societies of the world. Certain members
of our own societies often tend to think that our modern technological
superiority reflects cultural superiority and that those 'isolated
tribes' that come into contact with us should be suitably
impressed. Some get rather offended when the latter often
do not seem impressed at all. There is a fundamental difference,
though, between the 'How' cultures and the 'Why' cultures
of the world. Our modern Euro-American cultures are prime
examples of 'How' cultures: 'How can we go faster, live longer,
buy more gadgets, live life on the edge, look younger and
avoid death'? The more sensible cultures on earth would say
'Why'? to most of that. And that is what Pacific Islanders
are saying about Europe right now: 'Why'?

Let me explain. For nearly a decade, many
health food shops in the U.K. have stocked bottles of tablets
labelled 'Kava' or 'Kavakava', 'to be taken to alleviate stress
or anxiety'. In Germany, medicinal 'kava extract' has been
used as an ingredient in anti-stress medicines for decades,
and in fact German medical scientists have been working with
kava extracts since 1860. Kava tablets have also been available
in the US since the mid 1980s and became the 'in thing' in
New York when I was there in 1998. I remember seeing Drug
Stores and pharmacies in New York with big posters in their
windows 'Yes, We Have KavaKava', etc - and I even got arrested
at one point by the security guards of one major Drug Store
as I tried to take photos of the posters. I assume they thought
I might have been photographing the place with a view to planning
a future raid. When I tried to explain to them what real kava
was and where it came from, the guards' eyes gradually glazed
over and they gently released me. In 1999 certain Spanish
Health Food and Alternative Living magazines announced that
kava would soon be coming to Spain. I remember thinking periodically
over the last decade how long it often takes for our modern
cultures to really accept something new from the so-called
'Third World' (I should point out here that I consider this
term rather derogatory and that it is really our own modern
world that should be called by that term, our world so removed
by many steps from its real roots). In late January my wife
and I visited one of the major Pharmacies in the Calle de
las Farmacias of Vila (Eivissa/Ibiza Town) and I asked if
they sold any kava extract medicines. I was told that they
had been selling them, but had recently taken them off the
shelves as they had, earlier that month, received a circular
from the Spanish National Pharmacies Institute in Madrid to
withdraw stocks until further notice. In a nearby health food
shop there was a gap in the shelves where bottles of kava
tablets should have been. No explanations. Nobody really knew
why, just that they had received an official circular. As
often happens, it is quite possible that those responsible
for the circular did not really know either, they were merely
copying others.

Kava is the name for a plant, for its root,
for a drink made from its root and now for tablets and extract
from that root sold in the West. The plant grows only in the
Pacific. It first came to the attention of the English-speaking
world after Captain Cook's first visit to Tahiti in 1769,
when he and his scientists were invited to drink it ceremonially.
They were suitably impressed, but slightly put off by the
taste. It had a rather pleasing effect, and Cook's scientists
originally dubbed the plant it was made from as piper inebrians,
then changed that to piper methysticum (the 'drunk-making'
or 'inebriating' pepper, it being a distant relative of the
pepper plant). Early European explorers found that a drink
made from the roots of this plant was drunk ritually throughout
much of Polynesia, from Tonga to Samoa to the Cook Islands
and Hawaii and back to Fiji. In Hawaii it is called 'Awa',
in Tonga 'Kava', in Fiji 'Yaqona' (pronounced 'yanggona').
The root of these terms comes from an early Proto-Polynesian
term meaning 'bitter'. 'Kava' is the name that has stuck and
spread worldwide, rather like the origin of our word coffee'
or even 'tea'. Historians, explorers, writers and academics
for long assumed that it was a purely Polynesian drink. Little
did they know? Back in the hidden corner of the Southwest
Pacific lay the real homeland of kava, the volcanic archipelago
of Vanuatu, keeper of so many of the Pacific's secrets.

Traditionally there was no alcohol in the
Pacific Islands. But Pacific Islanders had something better
a gift from the Gods, from the Sprits, from the Mother Earth.
It is Spirit in plant form. It is Peace. It is Respect. It
is Harmony. It is Sounds from the World of the Ancestors.
It is the Way of Prayer. It is (in some areas) Woman, so therefore
changeable in mood, bestowing her favours gladly one day,
denying them the next. It is (in some areas) man and therefore
forbidden to women. It is Kava. The gift of the Gods to the
Pacific and the gift of the Pacific to the World.

But the Gift was first given to a group
of clans in northern Vanuatu. There, maybe several thousand
years ago, ancestors of still surviving clans discovered how
to artificially 'clone' a drinkable variety of the kava plant
from a wild, non-drinkable parent plant. This wild source
is a variety of pepper plant known by scientists as piper
wichmannii, and this grows only in western Melanesia (that
area comprised by West Papua, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon
Islands and Vanuatu). Extracts from the roots of this wild
plant are undrinkable, but modified forms are sometimes used
in traditional medicines. Through generations of observation
and experimentation, those wise men in northern Vanuatu managed
to develop from this plant another variety - and then more
- whose roots provided a drinkable extract whose effects,
are remarkable. These roots contain no alcoholic substances,
but an extremely complex array of 12 to 14 chemicals - mostly
analgesics and anaesthetics - that are linked in such a complex
interrelationship that it is almost impossible to reproduce
by modern methods. It is also and extremely difficult to tell
which are the essential ingredients for the effect the root
extract gives when drunk. The psychoactive ingredients have
been dubbed 'kavalactones' by modern scientists. The ingredients,
when drunk, work on the central nervous system, through a
reduction of activity in the spinal area, reducing cardiac
rhythm and then stimulating and relaxing respiration. The
whole effect is one of extremely pleasurable relaxation, with
the mind remaining clear with a sometimes-increased focus.
It is an extremely effective soporific and a mild narcotic,
but non-addictive. Effects last only a few hours and the drinker
wakes the next morning feeling fresh and revived. Medicinally,
it cleanses the kidneys through its diuretic action, flushes
out minor illnesses of the urino-genitary tract (and a good
practical note for certain readers: if you happen to be in
the first stages of a bout of gonorrhoea, it will get rid
of that as well), removes aches and pains, gets rid of headaches,
can assist in getting rid of skin pimples, and so on - the
list is almost endless. On a practical note for European readers,
it is also one of the most effective slimming aids known (and
you don't have to waste hours running or jogging, waiting
for that 'joggers high') and you can say goodbye to constipation
problems (although neither of these topics are not of great
concern to Pacific Islanders). But each subspecies of kava
- and there are over 80 of them in Vanuatu - has its own special
effects and use. Some are better for ritual/spiritual purposes,
some better for medicinal use. One type can be used as a liver
cleanser. Other types are of particular medicinal use for
women - to ease pre-menstrual aches and pains, to give a painless
childbirth, to facilitate lactation after birth, to eradicate
menopausal flushes, fevers and aches - and so on.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, like anything
- like coffee, tea, doughnuts, Smarties, steak, whatever -
if one overdoes it over an extended period of time, one can
slow down a bit. But as soon as one stops drinking for a couple
of days one is as right as rain. Untold thousands of Europeans
and Americans have benefited from taking kava tablets or kava
extract over the last decade to combat our modern society's
enemy, 'stress'. Now, just about when Eivissa and Spain were
also about to receive the benefits of this most wondrous plant,
it seems that it has been whisked away from us. Some European
doctors have said that it may affect the liver. 'What?"
say Pacific Islanders, who have never heard of any liver problems
with kava - especially when at least one form of kava is actually
used as a liver cleanser. Some European doctors think the
problem lies with kava. Pacific Islanders think the problem
lies with the modern medicinal/pharmaceutical industry in
Europe and specifically in Germany. There is hope for Eivissa
and Spain yet: the German government has not yet made an official
decision on whether or not to prohibit medicinal kava, and
the rest of Europe - and the US - are waiting for that decision
as well. Next week I will explain why the Pacific Islanders
are right, and why our western system seems to have been found
wanting.

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